Day 91: OK ok OK

So I have this depression when I'm not at work or working.  I wonder if this is something my mind is doing to condition itself to keep on working.  I feel great as long as I'm putting words down on the page (like this one).  Or reading things.  I have a feeling that this will help me get a lot of things done.  Also, for the first time in my life, I feel lonely!  This is great because it makes me want to be around people, and when I am around people I don't feel like it's forced or that I'm supposed to entertain.

Read a bunch of stuff about Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  Probably have that.  Every spoiled kid probably has that to some degree.  Even the poorest person in America has an easier life than kings in earlier generations had:  transportation, health care, heat, etcetera.  People don't need anything anymore, and we work for a means to an end.  Or atleast the Proletariat does, which unfortunately is me right now.  I should "quit my day job" and just write for a year straight.  Thinking about it...  I absolutely hate work anyway.  Then I'd figure out how to channel all of this into a positive... thing.

Anyway, back to writing.  Going to remain completely focused for an hour and see if I get to my thousand word goal.  I'd prefer to be writing in the morning but beggars can't be choosers.

/end.dear.diary.segment

            Diane was a voluptous beauty, a real looker indeed.   Space Cowboy kept a picture in his wallet, which was unfolded in the palm of his hand.  She was lassoing a three horned antelope while riding a razorback wearing a full leather outfit, covered head to toe in animalistic femininity.  He shed a tiny tear as he fondled his forehead vein.

            The lights in the bar dimmed, the stainglass windows reflected light from the outside like it was light otuside.  The duplications showed a giant ferocious looking chimera stranded on a yellow planet, which was surrounded on each side by surreal style smaller primary colors.  It looked like childrens artwork, but really good childrens artwork.  And it didn’t set a tone for the bar at all.  A microphone made a shrill static noise as it was powered on, and a pencilnecked geek with black greased back hair flattened out the microphone chord with his black zip up boots.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, but mostly ladies, welcome tonight to the Velvet Fairie.”  He twisted an imaginary moustache and a dark skinned eskimo hit a drum roll somewhere behind the stage.  “We’ve got three sets of two tonight.  First act up is the Cannibal Caped Crusaders.”  A boo resounded from the table of tough guy types.  The band, who was situated at a table directly in front of the stage squirmed.  “They’ll be quick… Next we have Bruno Pornto and his Imfamous Gears.”  A second boo.  Bruno Pornto was a cross dressing snake charmer with full arab garb.  “Tough crowd.  I know you guys will like our third act though.  The one, the only Paige Barrow is on after them, the hiatus is over.”

            “Hot dog, she hasn’t performed in years.”  Kenny slammed his fist and mug down.  “If you thought your Diane was something, this one will set you straight in just about four minutes flat.  Sometimes it doesn’t even take that long.”

            Space Cowboy scoffed.  Simple space cattle folk, he thought.

            “Where’s your girl, Kenny?”  He sat with both arms loosely hanging on each side and the mug in front of him.

            “I told you, I’m stranded.  If I try to jump a cattle ship out, I could be killed.  There’s an indefinite hiatus on my travel papers.  She’s on the other side of the galaxy.”

            The groups performed heavy metal folk on acoustic guitars.  The songs were originals, the sound system and acoustics were awful, and the gawkers who made their way in just as quickly left.  The old fashioned swinging doors let the twilight cast a shadow into the artificial light of the hall.

            “What’s taking so long?!  Get her up on stage!”  Kenny said, the pitcher half empty in front of him.  Drunks from the other tables chuckled.

            “Hey, cool it Ken.  The lady looks like she’s had a rough night.”

            Paige Barrow sat by the utility sink behind the bar, quietly relieving her face into a bar napkin.  It was unclear whether she was crying, blowing her nose, laughing, or simply hiding her face. 

            A sound Space Cowboy recognized as a draft from his days on Earth blew by outside.  The space locomotive flew by at speeds exceeding light.  A man wearing a sheriffs badge stumbled over the threshold, favoring his left arm that had three red gashes in it penetrating through his overcoat.  The bouncer and a crying female ran to his side, clutching him by both arms as he cried out in pain.  The women lamented like a funeral singer.  He leaned forward and spit up a mouth full of crimson spit, rubbing his face with the unbloodied sleeve.

            “Space Ranger is walking in a straight line… across security checkpoints… he’s not just an ordinary man!”  The man said, the fear of God behind his eyes.

            Space Cowboy sighed and pulled his hat down over his eyes.  Paige finally was taking the stage, a harried stagehand gathering the gear of the other groups which still littered the stage.  She removed a tin harp from a black box, delicately opening each metal clasp on a jet black case.  Her floral skirts sat across her crossed legs like wrapping paper. 

            Kenny sat slack jawed, slapping his knee and humming loudly before she even started a song.  His lips perpetually mouthed the words “hot dog”, even when he wasn’t talking.  He tapped his foot when he got sick of slapping his knee.

            The metal plate in Space Cowboy’s head vibrated, an uncomfortable tectonic shift taking place under his scalp.  “Yeah, yeah.”  He said to himself, forcing his legs to pick him up.  The spurs on his boots dug into the ground.  The rest of the bar was placated, staring graciously up at the stage, even the wounded officer by the door had become silent.

            “Siddown and let the lady play!”  The bouncer yelled, interupting the act more than Space Cowboy was doing.

            Just then, a militia of three men burst through the swinging doors, crashing directly into the wounded man by the door.  His arm made a hideous slurping noise and popped. 

            He cried out in agony but the three men carried him to the back hall of the bar by the restrooms, assuring him “there was no time for that now.”

            A blue suit of armor of a man pushed through the doors, a purple visor covering his knights helmet.  A single red eye flashed behind the visor, and with each flash it became brighter and more vibrant. 

Space Cowboy dove out of the booth, retrieving a pistol that looked more like two pieces of cardboard carved and fitted into the shape of  a plus sign.  The house lights suddenly came back on, and Paige scrambled to reinsert her autoharp into its case, falling over helplessly in the process.

The larger rowdy men at the table shouted obscenities at the Space Ranger.

“Haven’t you guys ever seen a Space Ranger before?!  Don’t look into his eye!”  Space Cowboy said, the red eye from the visor focusing across at him.  It refocused forward on the stage, and it hovered forward, the gravitational push of its immense weight shifting the placemats on the booths around it.

Day 90: Doesn't do well with silence

             1. You don't put baby into a corner.
             2. I feel like my body is naturally producing sudafed but I still want to take more.
             3.  I hate text messages and it feels like an easy way to keep me at arms distance.
             4. I'm already taken for granted.  Persistence persistence persistence.  You people drive me crazy.
             A more personal blog post again.  I was watching "The Muse" today because Albert Brooks is alright.  Some of the lines that he has his friend acknowledge as "great lines" which said friend proceeds to jot down in his little notebook aren't really very good lines at all.  That script could use some rewrites.  Not that my script doesn't always need rewrites, it does.  But, you can just keep on rewriting something ad infinitum.  Little red squiggly lines.
              Real life needs to stop happening so I can enjoy myself.  My writing isn't great but it's better, right?  It's atleast better.  I'm going out for a run.  See you guys in a few.
             I hate being at home.  Absolutely hate it.  Which is perfect because that should make me want to get out.  I am happy all day until I get home and then I feel like complete shit.  Well part of it's the cold.


            The door swung open and Space Cowboy and Kenny jumped.  An old timey looking felow with a straw hat, overalls, and three teeth hit Kenny with the door,   Lights flickered from the rafters inside.

            “Space Cowboy?”  The old man asked.  “That’s Space Cowboy ain’t it?”  When he verified that it was in fact the Space Cowboy he cowered back in fear.

            “Fellers, it’s the Space Cowboy’s back!”  The Old Man said.  A group of similar old men scrambled like cockroaches from a circular table.  A tray of nachos spilled on the wooden floor.

            “Calm down, calm down, I’m not here for you.”  Space Cowboy said, walking into the center of the room and staring up at the ceiling.  He pulled a chain out from under his shirt collar and removed it over his head, somehow fitting it around his oversized cowboy hat.

            “He’s got the key!”  One of the older man said.  They scattered to the far ends of the room, one with a wide scar over a shallow trench in his eye.  Kenny approached behind Space Cowboy slowly, puzzling over the significance of the key.

            “That key, now, you insert that key into something?  What are you unlocking?”  Kenny stared like a child having candy dangled in front of their face. 

            Space Cowboy climbed the stairs and felt his hand getting sticky.  It was covered in black soot, the railing a dirty mess. 

            An egg shaped box sat in the middle of the room upstairs, light refracting around it from the concave onyx windows.   He stood between the metal horseshoe shaped platform and a blue cone of light shone from the center of the platform up into the sky.

            “That’s it for the space travelers getting in here once he hits that thing.  Damn shame too.”  An old man whistled between his teeth.

            “Blue lights going to swallow up everything, just like it did in the Radama galaxy.  Soon ain’t going to be nothing here but Federal workers.”

            He twisted the key and the security system powered up.  The voice of the paper in the bag laughed a maniacal laugh.  The stars in the sky suddenly became visible, and then disappeard with a light speed haste.  The building started shaking and Space Cowboy fell backwards, catching himself  on the back of his neck on the stairs.

            Kenny stood trembling at the shaking base of the tower.  There was a loud “ding” noise and the sky turned into a big blue net.

            “Did what you want me to do, Space King!  Now set the girl free!”  Space Cowboy yelled into the picture.

            Back at the bar, underneath the neon mounted bucks head, Space Cowboy and Kenny sat alone nursing a pitcher.  Space Cowboy pulled his cowboy hat down over his eyes, the bartender eyeing him warily whle shining a glass.  A table of roughneck type of guys were talking loudly about the shield being in place.

            “This is probably the last bar we wanted to go to, Space Cowboy.”  Kenny said.

            “I just wanted to see Diane again.”  He shook his fist.

             

             Made it halfway to 500.  And it was awful.  Still day 90 though.

Day 89: Temporary Moratorium/Sleeving Cadence

           Alright so I made things make sense again.  Focus is weird because you should always be doing something.  I spend a lot of time thinking about doing things.  All of that time could be spent doing something.  Although, of course, that's exhausting.  Anything you can do is work.  I don't care about that, though, let's do it.
           I understand I'm supposed to move out with someone and talk about how they're "Off that day", or "What we're eating for dinner", and mostly be boring.  Alright, I admit it, real life is boring.  The world moves slowly and it's depressingly unlike what you hope it'd be.  In that way this fiction is an outlet, even though my fiction is also admittedly boring.
          All the advice I've gotten from reading books is to consistently "go out of your comfort zone."  Does going out of your comfort zone on facebook count on going out of your comfort zone?  I've had some pretty offensive posts recently!

            “Space King sent one of his edicts again.”  The Space Cowboy said, his stallion's space helmet bobbing as it walked down the trail.  His spurs beat into its side painfully, but it squinted its watering eyes and continued with no way to alert him.  Space Cowboy pulled a round wrapped piece of paper from his bag and pressed a button on it, and it unwrapped in front of them in a flat rectangle.  The squiggly written lines rearranged themselves into a video screen.

            “Hello Space Cowboy, or should I say Darryl.”  The king sad adroitly out of his tiny Spagghetio circle of a mouth.  He had a giant bumpy white whig on and his skin looked naturally pale.  “First of all, Space Cowboy… ahem… the gun you’re carrying.  Who are you planning on shooting with that thing?  Me?  One of my boys? Our humble planet of Probippity has no use for the things.”

            “I’m not registering my gun, it’s just not happening,”  Space Cowboy said.  “I’ve been living outdoors for years and I’ve never had to register my gun before.  What happens if that space bandit jumps onto my Space Stagecoach and I didn’t have that thing?  I’d have had to kill that sucker with my bare hands.”

            Space King waited for Space Cowboy to stop talking to resume.  Space Cowboy kept going, starting a long diatribe about space politics and how his father never had to deal with regulations.  He refused to look down at Space King, and stared instead across at Kenny.  Space King looked up at them both like giants.

            “How does he expect me to hunt without it?  The man’s gotta get his hand out of my back pocket.”  Kenny wrestled with his horse, it tramped in place.  “If I see him up there, flaunting his fancy space umbrella and shoving those space hams into his gullet, I’m going to…” 

            “I will not have you scare the Space Royalty!”  Space King said.  “We have asked you to do a simple job, activate the space shield and kindly get out!.”  Space Cowboy might have heard him but he didn’t let on. He quickly rerolled the ledger and put it back in his bag, whistling a 1930s era cattle poking tune.

            Space Cowboy looked up at the space manor on the only hill in the vicinity.  Made entirely out of glass, it looked like the lowest ball of a snowman with a three sectioned disgusting hornet perched on it.  Space Cowboy squinted angrily up at the tower, he knew the King was probably staring down at him through a telescope.  He couldn’t see that far.

            “Officious meddling bastard,”  Space Cowboy said.  “Sure I’m going to get a ticket again on my wagon.  That’s half of my fee for the job.”

            “Those traffic court fucks don’t even have an active line to complain to.  Either they get their money or that’s your car.  I’ve been stranded up here for years.”  Kenny lamented.

            The road was flanked on both sides by a residential colony.  A house maiden decked out from head to toe in what looked to be an intergalactic snowsuit closed the pneumatic tube of a front door, the kids behind her shouting protests.  The awestruck children watched from the one small window, the biggest one in front and the other two trying to peer around him.  The Space Cowboy saluted them by removing his oversized space hat and setting it back on top of his big black head.  They cheered and hollered like they had seen a real life Buzz Lightyear.

            “Let’s get this over with so we can go to Lefty’s.”  Kenny said, remounting the goat.  “Ain’t nothing like my actual horse, either.”  He kicked at the space goats side, it moaned lugubriously. 

            “The moon is getting more purple every day.”  Kenny wore the sunglasses that they insisted would help his space driving, and wondered if they’d have any effect on his vision.  “I swear to God that thing is getting more purple.”

            There had been pancakes at the public house that morning, and everyone else had stayed in.  The Captain insisted Kenny escort the Space Cowboy, a man no one knew a lot about except for the Space King.

            Kenny was through with smalltalk.  “Where do you live, Space Cowboy? Wonder why everyone calls you Space Cowboy.”  Space Cowboy didn’t respond.  He looked up at the space ranch hanging up there in the sky, the circular bisons grazing by the lucite barn. 

            “If you don’t shut your mouth this is going to be a much longer walk for both of us.” 

            They passed a sign that said they shouldn’t be going up into the mountains.

            “Captain said it’s right up here, just turn the generator on with the key and get out.”

            For the lack of vegetation on the trail, here were suddenly old dead trees with roots that looked petrified guiding the path.  The goat refused to go any futher when they crossed a trench where a stream used to be, Space Cowboy hopping off and guiding the goat off the trail where he itched it to a tree.  He wound the rope around the branch three times and tied it in a bowline knot.

            “I’ve been down here a hundred times, Space Cowboy.”  Kenny said.  He rubbed his arms.  “You could have just given me the key and I would have done it for you.”

            “I got strict orders, Kenny.  This key doesn’t leave my possession.”

            Kenny shook his head and they continued down a flanking dry earth.  Space Cowboy followed cautiously behind and kept his hand close to the holster.

            “Welp, here we are.”  Kenny’s voice garbled through the staticy voice modulator.  His face was hidden behind a cloud of gas inside the space helmet.

            The meter on Space Cowboy’s normality radar started to blink repeatedly.  He sensed something wasn’t right before he looked down at it. 

            They stood together infront of the outpost station, which appeared to be completely built into the ground underneath it.

           

Day 88: Before I forget

TV should be used for educational purposes.  Half an hour shows are a great source of entertainment but when people do nothing but watch "entertainment" it's the equivalent of a kid who discovers he can eat cookies for every meal.  The worst rated shows are always the most informative ones.  The best example of this is The History Channel or Science, where they try to liven everything up with spruce audio and graphics.  It's like they're sugarcoating a pill so you think it's candy.  Learning isn't as fun as entertainment, that's obvious.

Internet and Facebook ruin context.  I was just reading this awfully boring book by Tim Berners-Lee about the creation of the world wide web, and the goal initially seemed to be to encompass the entire world and allow everyone  to be involved in it.  This concept of "open world" is this sort of catch all in videogames now, "sandbox game", where they present you a world to play in.  You create context by presenting any sort of hub for things to take place from.  So, it's kind of like with TV, when you have these different worlds that are all acceptable substitutes for your real one, and then you use them in a misinformed or unintended way to entertain rather than inform. 

So I think to write my stupid fiction blog I'm going to have to first decide on a world I'm writing in.  The big problem with this is that I don't understand the world I live in.  That seems to be where science fiction comes from, where you can catalog the assorted metaworlds you've stumbled into.  My biggest problem has always been liminal space, what aspect of this giant world you're supposed to describe, and also what actions are relevant or important.  There's all of these "entertainment traps" in the world that you can fall into to keep you from creating anything relevant.

Another day of "not much writing", but fiction is a real bitch.  I've been "doing research", though.

World this story takes place in:

            Moon outpost with engineers working on mining.  Suddenly the temperature starts to rise on the moon.  Contact with the mothership gets cut off and they can no longer see it in space the way they used to be able to.  There’s a space lodge where they live, completely ran by robots with emotional AI.             

            He put the grave head down at the foot of the cave, removing his hat and fanning his face with it.  The bears nest was gone, they left a trail of fish guts behind them inside of the cave.

            The buggies back tires revved as it swayed backwards and forwards.  The automated system flashed red with errors.  The three engineers stood in front of the desk chairs in a row

Day 87: Madness

                Is doing the same thing a million times and expecting different results.  This is why I'm going to have to attack this writing thing from different angles as much as possible.  If you haven't watched Book TV, it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.  That's another shallow platitude from me.  I'm falling into these grammar traps.  I need to be older and more experienced and I'm not doing that by being younger and less experienced.
              Reading things about writing fiction have instructed me that I should keep a journal.  This isn't journaly enough of a journal for me, I think.  I need to get more personal.  It should help that no one comments on this thing, so I should be able to say anything.  At some point I've started censoring myself.  I still am committed to getting good at this.

             Roger picked the guy who looked most serious from the yellow pages.  The many ads that started with “Welcome” or “Please call” seemed too expedient for his liking, on the bottom of the page their was a picture of a staunch flat faced man with furrowed eyebrows and a charcoal three piece suit sitting in front of a fireplace.  This screamed “serious”, the kind of man who entertained important patrons after making them wait in his study for hours while he pondered the great questions of the universe.

            A black townhouse sedan pulled up to the door of the cabin, Roger looked up from his soggy cheerios on the shitty kitchen table through the window.  He opened the screen door and waved from the porch as a man exited the car.  He was full of deliberation, every action seemed smooth, cool, and calculated.

            “Doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would make housecalls, seems like the kind of guy you’d have to go to.”  Roger said as he watched the him scrape one leg on the path up the driveway.

            Jim was completely silent in the shack.  The sun heated the aluminum walls to a bright red, it didn’t look comfortable in there. 

            Roger looked like a sucker.  Forlorn look on his face, right hand gripping his left arm behind his back, face tattooed with pockmarks, dry skin, crows feet, and paleness.  He stood on the threshhold of the doorway in barefeet, the screen door beating against his feet and flinging itself open.

            “A Mr. Roger.” The man said, taking his hat off.  “So sorry to hear about your girls.  My own girls were taken from me once.  Rest assured, I got them back.”

            Roger was delighted at this news.  A smile broke the plane of his face, he silently gestured that the man follow him inside.

            “I apologize for the mess, I have been a mess, I’m just a mess about all this.”  Roger said, kicking rubbish underneath the oriental rug that Jim had earlier ripped.  A cuckoo clock that Miranda received as a wedding present from a high ranking duke sounded its cry on the wall. 

            “If you don’t mind me asking, and perhaps even if you do, Mr. Roger, what sort of people are you involved with?  Are there ransom demands?”  He removed a cigarette case from the inside of his creased vest, opening it and removing a cigarette with one hand.  Roger stared on as he lit a cigarette.

            “A scientist, I think.”  Roger said.  “We don’t have any more news than that.”

            The door to Jim’s shack swung open with a metallic grunt and he came scrambling up the drive. 

              Starting a new one tomorrow will maybe come back to this at some point

Day 86: Another one

            Hey, I missed yesterday too.  I think it's important to take some time out and reflect on what fiction is actually worth.  First thing, fiction has to be short and focused or it loses some of its storytelling elements.  I'm a lot more into nonfiction than fiction lately, and this makes me think I should invent new ways of fiction that are unique to me, because fiction as a whole is sort of either "movie adaptation material" or not.  So, cut the middle man out and make movies?


            Jim and Roger climbed back into his jeep, Otto’s disfigured corpse laying like a ragdoll at the bottom of the stairs.  Jim looked at Roger and shrugged;  Roger had not witnessed anything negative happening to Otto.  The moose head floated freely, braying like it was still out on the frontier.  Jim gathered up a handful of metallic objects and threw them in his bag.

            The building was practically disappearing, its gaunt walls caving in on themselves.

            “Turn here.”  Jim said repeatedly, Roger making the turns.  “Here, here.”  He shouted in eager anticipation.  They passed the café that they had eaten at on the way.

             They reached  the city that day at noon.  “Population 24,552”, the sign read as they passed it.  Jim was Rip Van Winkle, and Roger himself hadn’t been into the city too recently. 

            The first city street they drove into was blocked off wit police barricades and a loan officer blowing on a whistle with a hand extended straight in front of him.  The icecream shop across the street was filled with fathers, its windows see-through other than sundae decals.

            Roger insisted they stop at the gunstore, but the man behind the counter was insistent on forms of identification.  Roger had his wallet, but this consisted of a few credit cards and a drivers license picture.  They both looked like mountaindwelling hobos who were looking for someone to kill.

            The police finally got around to putting “missing” signs up.  The best picture Roger could produce for them was one of his daughters on two swings, looking antsy that he was keeping them from swining for the picture to be taken.  He sat in between them on the dirt pit underneath, his neck protruding forward like a turtles.  The picture was now on every electrical pole in the area, on the walls between small businesses, on billboards, on the news.

            Jim was out in the shack again like usual.  He rebuilt it quickly with the pieces he had rescued from Otto’s house, now it looked patchwork and lustrous, like a beacon for moonlight.  He promised he would work on something that would help Roger, although as much as Roger insisted the incident had been his fault he refused to capitulate blame completely. The night they returned from their useless drive to Otto’s, he let Jim know that his time was limited and that by virtue of the earlier incident he was a poor influece on the girls.

            The stretchy chord on the phone in Roger’s office made talking on itself uncomfortable.  It wouldn’t wind in a way that didn’t bother him, and it curved up against his face as he tried to talk.  He sighed and started dialing.  The phone clicked twice and started ringing, then an operator at the school connected him to his wifes extension.

            “Miranda.” Roger said, the syllables hanging heavily as he said them.

            “Roger!  Sorry I haven’t got ahold of you sooner, it’s been extremely busy here.”

            She sounded foreign to Roger, completely removed.  It was like she was on mars.

            “How are the girls doing?”  She asked, a tangible guilt in her voice.

            “That’s what I was meaning to tell you…”

            “One minute Roger!”  He heard some scurrying in the background.  “Sorry about that.  We made a very major discovery and they’ve entrusted me with the documentation.  I told them normally it was you who took care of that kind of thing, but…”

            “The girls are gone, Miranda.  They’re gone.”  He started to bawl uncontrollably.  Miranda kept her composure and waited for him to get it all out.  He wailed continuously for minutes before stopping, Jim watching the house from the tiny vertical slit in his new amalgamation.

            “Well what do you mean gone, Roger?  And why aren’t you out there trying to find them?”

            “It was Jim’s fault.  Jim and his crazy inventions.  I… don’t know how it even happened.  He conjured up miniature people from thin air, he made this big mess in the forest.  Some guy he used to know ran in and snatched them away, he thought they were Jim’s.  It was all too hectic and chaotic, there was nothing I could do.”

            She cut him off.  “Roger, you’ll find them, I know you will.  This sounds like a callous thing for a mother to say about her own daughters, but I know you’ll find them.”  She picked up a picture of herself and the girls sitting on the desk.  “You’ll be stronger for doing this, you’re going to be a much stronger person when I get back.”

            Roger closed his eyes and leaned against the bureau, holding the phone to his chest.  He put it back to his ear and there was silence, but he knew she was still there.

            “What’s the discovery?”  He asked, avoiding the somber details.  He was usually completely left in the dark about his wife’s work, and he didn’t think this time would be an exception.

            “All I can tell you, Roger, is, it’s something big.  I have to travel to Angola next week to meet a special, we’re bringing him back with us.”

            “A… specialist?”  Roger asked, perplexed.  He ran his hands through his disgusting greasy hair, thumbing the pockmarks that were popping up on his face.  He thought of his wife escorting a witch doctor of sorts back at some third world airport. 

            “I have to get going Roger, I’m so sorry.  Use the money in savings, hire a private investigator.  I’ll call you from Angola.”

            A few days passed before Roger could himself together enough to make the call.  He stayed confined to his room, noticing the dust swirling in the air in the afternoon sun.  He had a beer during the day and watched Jerry Springer, which validated his revulsion for himself.  There were a lot more private eyes in the yellow pages when he expected, opening the plump book with a feeling of dread.

            The TV blared on and on about personal injury attorneys.  Each commercial was either louder or quieter than the one before it. 

Day 86: Intrepid Dynamism

            I think I might let this thing run its course and become something different.  Maybe I'll do daily essays, or pop culture rants.  I could use it to organize events, or review 2 star movies.  The 2 star movies I review could get separate 2 star scores, explanations of how good of a two star movie it is (for being a two star movie).
            I need to go out and eat something.  Maybe I should go to the grocery store.  Boring.
           In the last two weeks I've discovered the absolute joy that is proofreading.  It's an instant source of improvement in this thing that I'm trying to get good at.  Not that it doesn't help to just write every day.
           Also, discovered that you can have a conversation with yourself.  I'm probably the last one to figure that one out, though.  You can think of the things that bother you and write them out, and then proofread that.  You can proofread the newspaper.
           Lesson I've learned about my own writing #1! (I wonder if a lot of people have this problem):
           Do not introduce machines or mechanisms which you (I) understand.

          Other thing I should have learned long ago about relationships/life:
          Nothing is about me!  It's always about the other person.  People like when things are about themselves.  It's a paradox, but that's only until someone lets it end naturally.  Or, it's about eventually figuring out what someone wants you to be and then acting like that, so you're duplicitous.

            

           “When do I get to see Mr. Grey? “  Jim asked, the room freezing.  No one dared look up from their notepads. 

            “Are you sure you’re asking me that?”  The attendant stooped down, talking over his glasses.  He gestured at the other men in the room, whos masses were little more than bundles of air.

            Jim contemplated this for a second, chewing the nails down to the cuticle on his pinky finger.  Suddenly, his mind was far away.  “Who are you, anyway?”  Jim asked, throwing his hands in the air.  He flashed a doubting look at Roger, who had one eye closed completely.

            The man snapped his fingers and a chandelier fell, the candles on it already burning. He snapped them again and they were in a cave by a gorge, Roger salivating like a grown up baby.  A waterfall lent its ambience to the scene, it looked too natural to be manmade and too perfect to be natural.

            “I’m Mr. Grey’s right hand man!”  He broke into what could have been a musical number.  “You’re not here, you should know that.  You have been to the hospital before, but you won’t be now.  This is all your mind putting this back together.” 

Each time he snapped, the pictures changed.  With a click, they were in Madrid.  Another crackle of the fingers landed them in ancient Egypt.  A group of slaves sold each other braided hair.

            “Wake up, Jim!”  The man yelled in Jim’s face, and Jim stared up to see the slideshow still going on.  A group of students were led in by a bearded man wearing a flannel shirt, denim jeans, and sporting an especially creepy pony tail.

            “Sit down.”  He said shortly and sternly to a pudgy kid who refused to relax.  The kid sat on his knees in the chair, his blubborous features bouncing. 

            “Open heart surgery,”  The instructor said, waiting for the rustling to stop.  He flashed an angry look at the pony tailed man.  “Some older people need to get pacemakers put in.  So we put them in.  It’s not pretty.  It might be a little out of these kids.”

            The teacher insisted that the slide show continued.  He sat with his arms crossed, trying his best to look serious.

            Some of the kids didn’t enjoy the slideshows of people cut open on tables.  One in particular pulled a knit cap over his eyes, whistling, humming, and shaking violently.  The tallest one leaned back in his chair sucking his thumb, but his eyes glued up to the screen.  Jim watched anxiously, afraid of where this dream sequence may lead him.  He waited for his mind to catch up to his body.   A clatter of steel toed boots clicked through the hallway outside, silhouettes flashing past the lit window.  The noises rebounded endlessly through the corridor, the echo seeming to get louder and then turning into the screech of a door opening.

            “And this next one is what it would be like if you had no oxygen on the moon.”  He revealed a bright red pulsating humanoid mass that lost liquids in a five shot sequence untl it disappeared completely.  The air was sucked out of each blood vessel with a pop, like bubblewrap.

            “You’re still studying in space.”  Jim said to himself.  A montage flashed through his mind, in which he saw himself shaking hands with Mr. Grey and receiving his diploma.  Next, he was in space studying in a bubble orbiting a space station.  Then, with the help of three other space workers, he used a giant rectangular cue tip to clean the lint from an outerspace belly button.  A few men were lost, but overall it was a good day.  They all sat around the microwave for heat and cooked Hot Pockets inside of it for sustenance.  They used their hands to remove the greasy pouches from their wet paper sleeves.  The attendant was there then, standing outside watching the security cameras.

            “Are you remembering now?”  Mr. Grey’s disembodied head asked from somewhere.  “Now do you get it?!”  It popped into three smaller bubbles, like a camera taking pictures from different angles. 

            Jim woke up in a cold sweat where he was sitting, covered in space particles floating overhead.  A frozen laugh flew past with its agreeable edges and saccharine pointed tongue.  A candle lit itself at the edge of the universe.

            “Machines acting up again.”  A man wearing an engineer outfit pulled a long level that came out of the ground.  The furnace burnt brightly behind him, grey matter spewing from it and dissipating like dust in the air. 

            Another engineer came in, thumbing through an oversized manual.  “It says here if we… if we…  Well just pull that lever.”

            They worked at the lever for a minute to no avail.  The second engineer crawled next to it, eyeing it from up close like a pool shot. 

            Jim and Roger remained suspended in the slug.  The slugs face suddenly warped, and it consumed itself slowly.  Otto tugged from above the hole, and they flew back into the room the same way they had exited.  They entered the booth with the door closed airtight.  Roger dusted himself off and sprung to his feet, a fear spreading across his face as he saw Otto charging into the machines gates. Jim stood fiddling with the dials on the machine in reverse slow motion until that energy had run its course, and then stared back at the door.

            “Ok Otto, you win.”  Jim said, opening the cage before Otto would forcefully pry it open.  “Why didn’t you want us going in there?”

            “It’s theoretical.  It’s not supposed to work.  You don’t exist in it.” Otto shook his head like he just saw two oversized possums jump into a mincemeat maker.  He laughed with a southern drawl and then became more stern.

            Otto produced a magnet with a chain linked through it, and held it in front of Roger and Jim.  “You fellers just couldn’t wait.”

           

         

         

Day 85: Natural Negativism

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            A muffled skirmish was going on down the hall.  The squeeky wheels of an old chair roughed up the marble floor underneath it, accompanied by the stymied protests of two tired orderlies.  Somehow, the man with the wheelchair had won the skirmish, and a chair came flying between a swinging door in the long corridor at the far end of the waiting room.  A bird rattled in its cage in the managers office, which sat in an alcove behind the secretaries desk at the front of the room.  The attendants that were dealing with Jim and Roger ignored the actions of the man who burst into view and then around in a semicircle.

            He pushed his way past Roger, who pulled his knees to his chest like a little egg.  He was wearing a faceless mask, and doctors chased him with stun guns, afraid to touch him.  He laughed inaudibly and moved perpetually.

            They wheeled Roger and Jim in the opposite direction.   Roger appeared asleep with his eyes open, and Jim was reduced to the manic state of his manic depression.  The clock on the wall ticked loudly, the fluorescent lights flickered and bathed the hall in an innocuous glow from above.  The cackling fiend on the opposite end of the hall was gone because their fields of vision were reduced to what was directly in front of them.

            “Couple of stragglers.”  A man walking behind the surgical mask wearing orderlies pushing the wheelchairs said.  He had brilliant blue eyes that were firmly squinted like the crinkles in an orange.   “This one might be antiepileptic.  He doesn’t look like he made the transition well.  Reminds me of the guy from last week, his ears started bleeding next.  We’d better get him into testing.”

            They were wheeled into a waiting area that was dotted with signs that implored them to stay silent.  The man disappeared behind a partition that wasn’t quite as tall as he was, Jim listening with a feigned ignorance.  A counselor type of guy dressed in street closed walked up slowly, like approaching wild animals.

            “Do not be alarmed if you don’t know how you got here.  Jim, it’s great to see you again.”  He extended a hand and shook Jim’s, who looked up at him with a confused uncertainty.

            The man behind the partition talked endlessly.  “The experiment was a failure.”  He said to a person that was shorter than the partition.  “We need to get them out of here.”

            The man who had done the balancing act with the slug was pushed on a gurney past them, his hands frozen little statues of hands.  He looked like a wax statue, the expression on his face a frozen anguish.  The attendants looked at each other knowingly across his sprawled out corpse.

            Otto called from somewhere, the phone he was trying to reach not fully manifested in the temporal realm.  Jim could feel the presence try to make itself known, he understood its desire to be heard.  He tried to remember what Otto had said or been about the first time he contacted him with little avail.

            Jim checked his pockets; he wasn’t carrying anything.  His legs twitched as he wrestled with them to move from his own volition, they wrestled against themselves like rubber bands.  He pulled himself out of the chair to his feet and fell flat on his face, catching himself awkwardly on his left wrist.  He rolled over and squeeked, pushing himself up on his side.  The man that shook his hand helped pull him back up to his feet.

            Roger’s act of resistance was less pronounced.  He turned his eyes back in his head, like he was trying to look through the back of his skull at Jim laying on the floor behind him.

            “Let’s go for a little walk, shall we guys?  Or shall I say I’ll push you along. Paul, I’m taking them for the tour.”  He called to the man on the other side of the wall.

            “I’ll need one of those, too, yeah.”  The sound of objects clashing with a metal tray rattled.  “We’re not removing the brain or anything.”  His head popped out of the other side.  “Yes, that’s fine.  We have a lot of preparation to do.  Have them back here… later.”  He disappeared again.

            Jim rose up and pulled each leg in a sequence of steps like they were made out of led.  He lunged out for Roger’s chair, which handily worked as a sort of walker. 

            Jim pushed him silently, the chair cascading over the shiny floor.  A man with a dangly security badge pushed past them, smiling and nodding as he passed.  They passed rooms on both sides of the hall ith bed ridden guests.  A priest held the hand of a gigantic man who looked like he had binge eaten his way into the room. 

            “These are the ignorant souls who don’t wish to pry themselves off of their hospital beds.  They don’t want to see the bigger picture, they are stuck in an endless cycle here.”

            The man showed them a slideshow, situating their chairs next to a row of spinny office chairs at a circular table.  He shut the blinds of the windows, twisting the rod attached to the end of the white blinds.  The projector purred and the fan on its side fired up, blowing cool air directly into Roger’s nose.

            “Here’s how it starts.”  He pressed a button and the next slide flipped into focus.  “You’re here.”

            A map of the premises flashed, with a red dot in the center to signify their location.

            “The moats on this end,”  He pointed with a baton.  “The dragons here.  No, no, I’m just kidding.  No one has ever escaped from this place though, and I don’t know if you want to try.  We’ll let you try.”

            He mixed some vacation photos in with the more straightforward presentation.  It became pretty apparent he was just trying to waste time to Jim.

            “We’ll have to show these two to their rooms, soon.”  A head poked through the doorway, which stood ajar.

Day 84: If there's a day where I don't make my thousand...

              It'd be today! 

             
              Congratulations to me for it.  Day eighty-four and we're still going.  Deep breaths, guys.  I need to recognize myself daily as an accomplisher of tasks!  I should give myself a fake award.  This is all slightly sarcastic.  But not sardonic.  Surreptitious.
              Here's the part where I write about the cathartic elements of writing and how doing this helps me keep my identity that I've forged of being a writer.  It's all true.  I should have had that identity at Day 28.  In development.
              Oh, one other thing.  "Show, don't tell" works in real life just as well as it works in bullshit fiction.  I reread yesterdays and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  There was atleast some sort of strand holding it together.
              I lost a day, I know I did.  I was doing other things.  Things that I think are more importance than this, even though this is something I'm investing all of my free time daily in.  I wonder what that thing was.  I am kind of upset I lost a day though, so I'll just pretend it never happened and publish this one as Day 84.  Next week on Day 91, it will have been forgotten by history entirely.

             Letter from my future self to current me:
            You're at the point where reading is more important than writing.  Get the writing done every day, but read more.  You're bridging the gap between your writing and their writing by reading.

             Jim beckoned Roger to follow him into the shack.  Roger turned to see Otto falling right onto him, his arms wide and long like an unscrewed vicegrip.  The boarded gate to the entrance snapped as he pushed it open, giving him a severe red scratch on his abdomen

            The chickens stood around in the yard, officiously wandering and poking their beaks into the desert.  They skidded around on the outside of the shack like worshippers.  Jim pushed one behind him and Otto ran into it, stuck on the wrong side of a cattle drive.

            Inside the shack there was a machine that looked like a silver egg.  It had a thick plate window on the outside and power chords connected to it like I.Vs, running into an underground passageway.  The steal grates of the floor allowed gusts of wind to emanate upwards with the sound of an industrial fan chopping at the air below.  An incubation chamber sat on the far side of the room that looked like a tanning bed with hothouse lights over it.

            Jim pulled the squeeky shitty door behind him after Roger ducked inside, it sliding acutely on its upper hinges.  Otto pried it open with ease, but it was too late, they had jumped in his machine.  It disappeared in a fracured black blip, like the invisible blackhole behind the backstage curtain of the world.

            Jim found himself in a funnel.  He looked at his hands, they stretched backwards like strands of white light.  Roger was at the end of the tunnel, struggling like a kid who couldn’t swim against the time current that was pulling him headfirst into an icefishing hole.  The light refracted off of the prisms that contracted it, continuing on endlessly in streams of light at first and then snapping abruptly into focus.

            “Time elevator.”  Jim said.  His words echoed off the walls like tennis balls, each sylabble traveling in a line of bumpy air.  The sound of his voice sounded like it did when it was recorded.  It immediately reminded him of a failed invention he had spent years attempting to visualize that had the intended use of calling his future self.  However, when the phone was answered in the future, his future self was sucked into the past, and the only way he knew this was conjecture.  A machine he used to intercept transmissions from the past had recorded an image of a version of himself who appeared older, that seemed to be unhappy with his self of the future.  Since then, he was careful not to screw with time in the way he was presently doing.

Otto stood at the top of the time vortex, looking like the Brawny paper towel guy.  He was soon overtaken with duplications of himself, spawning enormously into a squadrant that dissolved into its own omnipotence.  Then, the outside world was just a checkered pattern.

            Jim righted himself to his feet when his mind finally adjusted to the time tunnel.  The chaotic wavy tunnel developed boundaries as his eyes adjusted, although he knew it hadn’t been his eyes but his entire brain.  Roger struggled at the far end of the tunnel, gurgling the pockets of oxygen that had found their way in between dimensions. 

            Jim walked past Roger at first, his feet feeling like they may collapse back into the time river at the drop of a hat.  He felt like a water bug sitting on top of a lifeless pond.

            Overhead lights cracked on and Roger sat up, no longer constricted.  They were inside what appeared to be a giant translucent slug, its distinction from a snail being the lack of a shell.  Another set of overhead lights powered up soundlessly, and they could see a second thin membrane on the outside of the slug.  A crowd of spectacled men in white coats watched in silent awe.  Turning back toward the tail of the thing, Jim saw that the creature they were in seemed to be mounted on the hand of a man in black pants and a white wife beater.

            A long drum roll sounded and the audience gasped in anticipation.  The slug seemed to come to life, its feelers unraveling and twisting like a Peep in a microwave.  Blue fluorescent lights snapped on, bathing the slug in a dreamlike hue.  Its head stretched upward and took the shape of an avian creature, the globulous middle section stretching into two gracile wings.

            “Mr. Grey, Mr. Grey, Mr, Grey.”  A monotone chorus started from the audience.  An invisible TV monitor urged them to become more excited, a disembodied white gloved hand floating and gesturing enthusiastically.  A man with a white paper hat sold hot dogs out of a tube that looked like a hot dog. 

            A spotlight shone on the mans face.  His sweaty brow and shiny face were exacerbated beyond exertion, he looked like he could collapse at any moment.  A group of paramedics waited anxiously behind a blue hospital curtain, the leader of the group looking focused and intense as they crouched in a semicircle.

            The slug had transformed into a swan, and the swan was now melting into a larva of sorts.  Roger struggled with a swimming motion against the inside wall of the sculpture like a cat in a plastic bag.  The whole thing smelled like hand sanitizer, and felt wetter than watter.  It soaked right into Roger’s skin, the whole arm feeling limp and satiated.

            “Presto!”  The magic man said, and his face turned from a grimace into a davinare smirk.  Jim and Roger felt their bodies slowly becoming warm, and the insides of their eyes filled with light.  The slug disappeared, and they were standing in a bright white room, fully redressed in hospital garbs.

            A doctor instructed two orderlies to seat them in wheelchairs, and they insisted it be so.  Roger immediately sat down and his head lolled to one side, drool gathering on his shoulder. 

            Jim straightened out the curled sleeves of his hospital gown.

             
           

               
             

Day 83: Patented Move

Concentration concentration concentration.  That's all.

Noticed lately that people like me better than I like myself.  And I definitely like myself.  So this is weird.  End of emo rant.

Writing is getting better!  Not that it's necessarily going anywhere, but my focus is improving and my "minds eye" is something which may have come into existence.  Pretty sure you can just will anything into creation.
            I apologize to everyone for the quality of this one.  No, I don't.  It's short, what more could you ask for?

            A steady line of ducks emerged behind the first one, each becoming larger and more brightly colored in visual accordance with the previous one.  The yellow sheen of their coats resembled shag carpeting.  They showed little alarm for the bulging chains, the straining wood, if it hadn’t been their cause all along.           

Jim watched with a raised eyebrow.  He imagined an enormous mother duck type of duck in the building pumping these out.

            The door of the shack flung open and Otto came storming out, his boots falling in thunderous thuds.  He looked like a giant trying to stomp out a forest fire.  Roger was inside relaxing with his plate of ribs he had heated on the stove, standing pensively over the sink.

            “Still working on the stem cell physics stuff, huh?  You old rascal, I thought you gave it up.”  Jim said, watching Otto use his enormous arms to gather up the ducks like dribbling a giant furry basketball.  “I thought after you left Grey you were just going to be a man of the land.  As it is, you’re a lot like me.”

            “Didn’t hide it very well?  Well, we’ll get into that.”  Otto said.  “Help me push these little bastards back inside.”

            The birds started chirping, a quiet golf clap at first growing louder and more aggravated as Jim and Otto tried to shove them back towards the shack.  Otto scurried around, grappling like a professional wrestler.  Their sizes were fixed now, but Otto refused to acknowledge the fact they wouldn’t fit back in the tiny mousehole sized crack.  Roger stepped out onto the grass, nervously gnawing at the hunk of meat.

            “Go back in the house, get me my rope.”  Otto said, armdeep in the yellow muff.  His head faced the opposite direction, sprawled out with his legs back like he was trying to push a car out of a snowy situation.  “We gotta tie these suckers up.”

            Otto let go of the chicks to see what they’d do.  They all stared up at him and Jim, confused and derelict.  He tried to compress one back down to its original size using his hands like a vice, and it squashed out flat like a pancake.  When he released it, it popped back open into a ball and walked around aimlessly again, like a balloon with legs.  Jim watched as the chains snapped like elastic bands, and the smaller shacks door squeeked open.

            Roger had returned inside and was looking around the house for rope.  He checked under the couch, stared up at the ceiling, and was by all practical standards ineffectual.  He stared up at the wooden chest in the bedroom, the inevitable end to his journey.  It was curiously quiet outside, the chirping had lulled down to an agreeable level.  He gripped the metal banister and proceeded up the stairs.

            Otto’s doorless room was basically a giant bed orbitted by a dresser, a bookshelf, and a hole in the ceiling that passed for a skylight.  Roger hit the light switch next to the door, and an overhead light buzzed on with the sound of an old fashioned tube TV.  He crouched down and lifted the bed, pulling the crate out from underneath with great difficulty because he could only get two fingers through its metal bearing.  He thought of those moms who use adrenaline rushes to rescue their babies from underneath debris.

            The box was full of intertangled wires, each connected like bundles of nerves.  He pried them apart with a sickening plop, the area underneath full of foggy viscuous liquid.  He couldn’t make out the objects inside of the fog, and his hand slowly glided into the void as if by its own volition.  When he couldn’t see it, it didn’t feel like his hand anymore.  He felt something inside grab his hand, when he tried to grab something with his hand.  When he retracted his arm by the elbow, he saw he was holding a long strand of rope, and as he continued to pull at it more and more continued to come out.

            Jim and Otto stepped back into the house,  covered in yellow fur.  Otto’s arms hung like violent eels out of water.  He looked around for Roger, upon noticing him upstairs he flew up the flight three steps at a time.  He slapped Roger back with enough energy to send him sprawling in a heap into the wall, and grabbed the rope and started pulling.  His mountain man lumberjack arms worked at it, pulling rope until it became taut at the end, at which point a heave ripped it free from whatever it was connected to.  The box squeeled and a clear mist sprayed over the room, coating everything in an ambriotic layer.

            Jim disappeared back outside, and Otto stood in the center of the room with the rope stretched over both of his hands, like it was something that died.  Roger pulled himself up and pushed his palms into his eyes, his head spinning.

            “What was that?  You said you wanted rope!”  Roger said indignantly. 

            “This is rope to you?”  Otto said, and Roger looked in horror as the rope had revealed its nature as a long black tendon.  “You could never understand the mechanics of this invention, long story short its alien technology.”  Roger was horribly disappointed with this explanation.

            Roger had been distracted from his mission long enough.  Things were happening too fast.  He pushed past Otto and back down the stairs, and then out onto the gravel walkway.  An overpowering smell of burning took his senses by storm, a cloud of smoke rose from the seemingly empty desert in the distance. 

            Jim stood at the gate of the shack, facing Roger.

            “This is what we need, it’s in here.  This is how we get there.”  Jim sounded self assured and confident. 

            Otto stormed outside.  “You’re not going to be using any of my stuff, Jim.  The road ends here.  Both of you guys seem alright, it’s nothing personal, but I’m going to make sure you stay here.”